Waiting in The Upside Down
When you foster kids from the system, you will come into contact with Demogorgons from the mirky woods of trauma.
I started writing this email a couple weeks ago. I would write large chunks at a time only to let it sit untouched for several days. It’s grown like a pile of dishes that you tell yourself you’ll do tonight before going to bed, but, ya know what, a few episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee won’t hurt.
We’ve had the girls for the three months as of December 13. Three months. It’s as long as their previous foster placement. There’s been a lot of growth in three months. It feels almost…normal? The girls feel very much like ours; we’ll be adopting them in April or May. But developing true felt-safety can take more time than you think.
There’s a difference in being safe and feeling safe. Kids from hard places—kids who have experienced instability and trauma in their early years—have formed a deep distrust of the world. Nothing is predictable. The adults in their lives have proven to be incapable of providing love and safety. So they’re perpetually in survival mode. Their brains are using most of their energy to cope and keep themselves safe.
Think of the thousands and thousands of times a child cries in her first year or two of life. In a healthy home, those cries are met. With food. With hugs. With kisses. With the same soothing voices. Repeatedly. By the same caregivers. Her needs are being met. She is learning that the world can be a safe place.
When children experience trauma, when they are neglected, put in unsafe circumstances, placed with different caregivers—early and often, in critical stages of their development—they miss out on this process. Instead of having their needs met, they are having to meet their own needs. With our girls, we’ve been counseled that because of what they’ve been through, it might take months—maybe even up to and over a year—before they actually feel safe with us, even though they are, in reality, perfectly safe. Yes, we’ve seen progress. We are thankful. It’s clear that they feel safer than they did even a month ago. But they have’t achieved healthy attachment yet.
It’s easy to assume that they feel safe because things aren’t as outwardly crazy as they were that first year or so with James. This is due primarily to the fact that, because the girls are legally free, we’re not doing visits with their biological parents, which is what we went through for the first year we had James. When you’re sharing “your” kid with his “real” parents for two hours three times a week, for 12 months, attachment and bonding get flicked out the window like a cigarette. On visit days, James would come back to us disoriented and confused. He’d act out, withdraw and, worst of all, talk about how much fun he just had.
Thankfully, these dynamics are not at play with the girls. For the most part. They spend their days learning their ABCs, playing with foam swords, playing house, building forts in the living room, building/deconstructing Legos, listening to and re-enacting stories about rabbits with swords, going sledding in November snow, singing Christmas carols. One night a couple weeks ago, our older girl was having a hard time sleeping due to a cough. We got her out of bed and had “tea time” at the dining room table. She smiled the whole time. Her eyes were clear and wanted to connect with ours. She gave us a warm, full “I love you” in between sips of her tea. Finding one-on-one with three kids can be challenging (cut to all the parents nodding their heads), but they love it and need it.
In those moments, life feels good and “normal." Attachment is happening. Safety is being felt.
Then suddenly, without warning, there’s a Demogorgon blocking the road.
The Upside Down in Netflix’s Stranger Things is the best metaphor I’ve seen for what it’s like to be triggered by past trauma. It’s not perfect, but it’s close. Out of nowhere, something—a memory, a smell, a taste—jumps out at you from the misty woods of your past, and you’re taken to a different dimension in your brain. The world is recognizable, but dark and sickly. The people and places in your life that give you stability and comfort are there and not there at the same time. You’re trapped. You can only communicate through Christmas lights.
Two days after the “tea time” day, at play therapy, our older girl was very clearly missing the foster parents who had them right before they came to our home. (We are the girls’ third home this calendar year.) She held a baby doll and looked into her past with a distant, “thousand-mile” stare. At dinner that night, she talked about her previous caregivers as “mommy” and “daddy.” Even after taking the girls on a “goodbye visit” to see their previous caregivers—to help bring some closure—the ache and confusion in our older girl’s heart still lingers. She’s grieving a loss, which is something that should not be “normal” for a 4-year-old.
And if all that weren’t enough, one of the girls' past foster placements is now insisting that they stay involved in their lives, even though it’s been over a year since they last had contact with them.
In these moments all I want to do is buy a section in the Nebraska sandhills and move the whole family there. Let's just get away and sever all contact with this crazy world. All the feelings of uncertainty and instability (trauma) we felt in the thick of Mirkwood with James’s case come rushing back. It's almost as if we stop breathing.
So we take a breath. We pray for perspective.
And I tell myself that this, too, is normal. When you foster kids from the system, you will come into contact with attachment issues and emotionally unstable ex-caregivers. That doesn’t mean that it’s not jarring or triggering. There are Demogorgons in the woods. But slowly I have learned to say, like the poet Jane Kenyon, to “let evening come":
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
We’re in the heart of Advent, the season of waiting and anticipation. It’s weird how we make such a big, beautiful deal about waiting and hoping and longing. It’s hard to wait. It’s hard to wait when you’re in The Upside Down and everything feels normal and abnormal all at once. That ranch in Nebraska looks pretty appealing sometimes.
There are mornings when
I have to search
for your eyes
I can hear them
like a river
deep and brown
running through
blond stands of trees
If I listen
long enough to tell
the difference between
wind and water,
eventually I’ll arrive
at the banks
to see myself
among the stones and trout.
I wrote this poem in early October, just a couple weeks after the girls had come to be with us. But it’s a good “waiting” poem. Seeing it in Advent’s light is helpful. It’s about listening and waiting for the arrival of safety. Because there was a time when I didn’t know what to expect from the girls when they woke up each morning. Sometimes they’d be happy to see us. Other days they’d be avoidant, distant...scared. I’d stoop down to hug our older girl and look into our her eyes, and she’d hide her face and curl up, sometimes with her hands over her face. Her words would be few. It’s hard not to take such things personally. Which is the great challenge of fostering and adoption (and maybe just parenting in general): can I put aside my own insecurities and priorities for the good of these babies? Can I place myself in their stories and help them find their voice?
Reading this poem now is a source of great grace. It’s amazing how far the girls have come in three months. They are joyful and eager to hug us and be with us in the mornings. It’s a good, this-is-how-it-should-be feeling.
Advent is waiting practice until a time-and-space-controlling Child banishes the monsters for good. We’re all waiting for the world to get turned right-side up. To be adopted. To feel truly safe. To be free from the bizarro stresses of fostering that make me pine for Nebraska.
So we continue to ask for the grace to wait with intentionality and thankfulness. We’re thankful for the traditions we’re establishing now. The kids love opening a new door in our Advent book each day, and they’re filling up the Jesse Tree with ornaments. (James hugged the Jesse Tree the other day and said, “I love you, God!”)
We are thankful for our family—our kids have the best grandparents and cousins—friends, neighbors and professionals. You know who you are. You make this journey possible.
I am thankful for my wife, who recently made the brave, beautiful decision to quit her job to be home with our kids. To help them flourish and feel safe. I am so proud of her, and I can't believe that I get to take my place beside her in this story.
We are thankful for Texas Christian University’s TBRI training. We’re different people and better parents because of it. I cannot wait to hug Dr. Karyn Purvis in heaven.
And we are beyond thankful for our three kids. For God’s kindness in bringing them to us, for how they fill our home with laughter and other loud noises, and for the safety we feel in our Savior's strength.
Merry Christmas.